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In 1987, an NEH-supported institute titled "Chaucer's Canterbury Tales: Medieval Contexts and Modern Responses" addressed concerns that Chaucer's poetry was disappearing from the "standard undergraduate curriculum" and discussed ways to "revivify"…

Chaucer's transformations of his sources produced a work that invites multiple and open-ended responses. Benson contrasts TC and its source, Boccaccio's Filostrato; he assesses medieval and modern readership of TC; and he considers the story of Troy…

Describes the writers' approaches to their source in Chaucer: Lydgate as a "scholarly commentator" and Henryson as a poet who exploits "Chaucer's innovative literary devices" in an original way. …

Compares Chaucer's poetry and the so-called Peasants' Revolt of 1381, demonstrating their common unexpectedness, extremism, touches of conservatism, and uniqueness. As is clear from his treatment of the Revolt in NPT, Chaucer was not a political…

Not all of Chaucer's religious tales are alike. In MLT and ClT, Chaucer "transforms the same basic material into two radically different, though equally valid, varieties of religious poetry." A religious romance, MLT "employs great rhetorical…

Darwinian, Freudian, and Marxist approaches to CT have "obscure(d) the historical and intellectual context of the religious tales" (Mel, ParsT, ClT, MLT, PrT, SNT), making them the "most marginalized" of Chaucer's works. Articles in the…

Argues that "Chaucer is as much a religious artist as a comic artist" and that to exclude either fabliaux or religious tales is to reduce the achievement of CT. Examines the common aesthetic of PrT, SNT, MLT, and ClT, which despite their stylistic…

After Chaucer's TC, minor writers of the fifteenth, sixteenth,and early seventeenth centuries generally ignore "both the high passion and the tragedy of the lovers." The two type characters appear chiefly in brief allusions, "with none of Chaucer's…

Benson urges that Chaucer be returned from merely professional scholarship to the mainstream of English literature and finds that structuralist, poststructuralist, Marxist, and feminist theories give new perspectives on Chaucer's work. Equally,…

Chaucer experiments with "different aesthetic and doctrinal possibilities" in his religious tales, which, "far from being dull and dutiful," demonstrate his literary virtuosity. Though MLT and ClT tell similar stories, MLT is a religious romance…

The characters in CT are neither fully developed nor consistent; tellers and their tales are loosely connected. Thus, Kittredge's "dramatic theory" is limited: it leads readers to focus on personalities of the pilgrims rather than on Chaucer's…

Despite the tenets of "dramatic theory" from Kittredge to modern times, the links between the pilgrims and their tales are not reliable bases on which to build valid literary criticism. Not the psyches of the pilgrims but the different styles of the…

Chaucer's Man of Law attacks Gower for stories of Canacee and Apollonius, while defending Chaucer for omission of "swich unkynde abhomynacions" (MLP 77-89). Gower sympathizes with but condemns the characters. In Chaucer we have "a less rigidly…

The Physician's being "grounded in astronomye," i.e., astrology, is not a slighting gibe at his abilities. The publication of Nicholas of Lynn's "Kalendarium" (ed. Sigmund Eisner, Chaucer Library) offers "convincing evidence that Chaucer intended no…

A limitation of the "dramatic" interpretation of CT is its focus upon pilgrims rather than tales. Th and Mel show contrasting narrative modes.

The last chapter, dealing with the degeneration of the history of Troy matter, emphasizes tragic ignorance rather than moral weakness in TC.

In Henryson's poem, contrary to traditional interpretation, Troilus is the more limited character and Cresseid the more noble.

Guido's "Historia Destructionis Troiae" uses an objective historical tone, mixed with outbursts of personal lamentation. From this Chaucer developed his narrator, a philosophical historian who is affected as a man by his own story, to accent in TC…

Benson argues against interpreting CT in terms of dramatic theory: the pilgrims are not fully developed human characters, nor are their tales expressions of their individual psychologies. The most developed pilgrims-the Pardoner and the Wife of…

The Pardoner should be read not as a real person but as an allegorical figure. Modern discussions overemphasize the Pardoner's sexuality and distort the fact that hints about his sexuality prepare for the more important concern with his…

Significantly, the setting of GP is located outside the limits of London proper, and most of the pilgrims are not Londoners. CkT offers a clear vision of fourteenth-century London and reflects what is both good and appalling about the city.

Benson describes the very different views of London produced by Chaucer, Gower, Hoccleve, and Lydgate, as well as the depictions in William FitzStephen's "Description of London" (1174) and "London Lickpenny" (fifteenth-century). These representations…

Benson advocates teaching Chaucer in Middle English, because the liveliness and vitality of Chaucer's language are lost in translation.

Justifies dating the "Destruction of Troy" after TC (i.e., "about 1400") by exploring echoes of the former in the latter.

Shows that the characterization of Calchas in TC influenced the fifteenth-century "Sege of Troy."